Question

I have a select statement like

SELECT 'Name' = customer_fname+ ', ' + customer_lname
FROM customers

Its output is like:

peter, willson
jenny, Mark

Now, if customer_fname is null, then output will be:

, willson
    , Mark

If customer_lname is null then:

 peter, 
    jenny,

And if both customer_fname and customer_lname are null then only the comma will be displayed.

I want to remove the comma. How do I do this?

Answer 1

Ordinarily I would suggest using the ISNULL operator. However, as you need to check on both fields, the logic becomes a bit nasty. Therefore, I would suggest using a CASE statement.

SELECT CASE 
    WHEN first_name IS NULL AND last_name IS NULL THEN ''
    WHEN first_name IS NULL AND last_name IS NOT NULL THEN last_name
    WHEN first_name IS NOT NULL AND last_name IS NULL THEN first_name
    ELSE last_name + ', ' + first_name
END 
FROM customers

EDIT For dknaack – an ISNULL solution 🙂

SELECT ISNULL(last_name + ', ' + first_name, 
           ISNULL(last_name, 
               ISNULL(first_name, '')))
FROM Customers